[Something in the Way 01.0] Something in the Way

by Jessica Hawkins

  He tossed me the keys. It was barely nine-thirty and didn’t seem worth arguing about. Even if I wasn’t going to drink, I was the new guy, and their only hope for refills. I passed my untouched beer to the guy next to me and stood. “All right.”

  “There’s a liquor store on the main boulevard,” Vern said. “If it’s closed, just stop in any dive around there and slip ’em some cash. They’ll sell you a bottle of something.”

  I nodded at them and headed for staff parking. Gary caught up with me after a few yards. “Forgot to get you cash,” he said, passing me a couple twenties.

  I thought about not accepting it, but I didn’t have a dollar to spare on other people’s alcohol, so I put it in my pocket. “Thanks.”

  “Also wanted to thank you,” Gary said. “You did good this week.”

  “Yeah?”

  We stopped at Vern’s truck, a white, rusted Ford from the seventies that looked like it weighed as much as a whale and probably moved as fast. “I was a little worried about having Tiffany here,” Gary said. “She seems like a rule breaker. But far’s I know, you two kept it clean. That probably wasn’t easy so I appreciate it.” He ran a hand through the mop of curls on his head. “How long you two been dating?”

  “Couples months I guess.”

  “Ah. Is it serious?”

  I glanced back at the campfire. No, it wasn’t, but it could get serious. If things kept up this way, Tiffany letting down her guard, Lake being off limits, it might. “Nah. Not yet.”

  “Good, good.” Gary rocked on his heels. “You’re too young to settle down, but I know how these girls can get. Don’t let her push you in that direction if you aren’t ready.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say about it. Much as I liked Gary, I wasn’t in the habit of talking about my personal shit with anyone.

  He slapped me on the back. “See you in a few.”

  I climbed into the beat-up truck. The thing didn’t look like it’d make it down the block, much less to town, but I figured Vern knew better than me. It growled to life, and I gave it a few minutes to warm up. Luckily, the heater worked. Walking away from the campfire had left me with a chill. I reversed out of the lot and headed for the trail toward the highway. I squinted through the pitch dark, the headlights showing only what was right in front of me.

  At the mouth of the unpaved road, a movement caught my eye. Lake stepped out into the path, looking not even a little worried I might hit her. I slammed on the brakes. “Jesus Christ.”

  In denim short-shorts that looked a size too big and a t-shirt a size too small, she came around to the passenger’s side and opened the door.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  “Looking for you. I waited at the pool, hoping you’d come since it’s our last night.”

  I checked over my shoulder to make sure nobody was around. “Get in.”

  She hauled herself into the seat and pulled on the door. Using all her weight only moved it a few inches. The truck was hidden by trees, but we weren’t even off the campsite yet. I leaned over to grab the handle, and the door creaked and groaned, closing heavily.

  Her face was in mine. I smelled sweetness, watermelon or something, and chlorine. “You didn’t get in the pool, did you?”

  “Just my feet.”

  She kicked off her flip-flops. The fine, gold hair on her upper thigh shimmered under the dome light. I didn’t know where to start. The skimpy outfit? Sneaking around in the dark? Swimming without supervision? “You can’t be here, Lake.”

  “I know. But it’s our last night.”

  We were on display. I started to drive to get the light to turn off. “It’s everyone’s last night.”

  I went slowly down the unpaved trail, but we jostled in our seats anyway. She didn’t even bother looking out the windshield. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  Hunched over the wheel, I glanced between her and the road. The seat was one long bench of three seats, Caribbean-turquoise vinyl. She pulled one bare foot up on it and faced me, like I was about to say something important. “On an errand.”

  “So you’re coming right back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what’s the big deal if I come?”

  It was after dark, she was a minor, and I was responsible for her. All that said, she’d never be safer than when she was with me. I was sure of it. I adjusted the rearview mirror. “You promise to go straight to your cabin when we get back?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’re you doing, swimming alone at night?” I made sure my tone conveyed my disapproval.

  “I told you. Waiting for you. And I only put my feet in.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s dangerous. Water tricks you. It looks calm and inviting, but it can kill you. Fast.”

  She didn’t respond. If I’d scared her, good. Nothing bad ever came of respecting the elements.

  The final few yards of the road were bad enough to knock a pack of cigarettes out of Vern’s visor. Lake picked them up. “How come you never smoke in front of me?”

  “They’re not mine.” I pulled onto a main road, and the ride got about as smooth as it was going to get in this soon-to-be junkyard scrap metal. I relaxed back into my seat. “We talked about this. Secondhand smoke’s bad for you.”

  “And not for you?”

  Lake shouldn’t be in the truck. I shouldn’t’ve been noticing or still thinking about those soft-looking hairs on her leg. I should’ve sent her back. I didn’t even want alcohol but somehow I’d ended up in a situation. I would’ve killed for a cigarette right then. “Gimme those.”

  She handed over the pack, and I stuffed it between the seats. “I thought about what you said the other night. I’ll quit, it’s just going to take some time.”

  “I can help,” she said.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. There must be some way.”

  “It’s not like AA where you get a sponsor.”

  I took the on-ramp to the highway. It was dead, not many cars around, just lots of black pavement flanked by shadowed trees. The sliver of a moon waxed from new to full.

  “I could check in on you.” Her voice barely carried over the grumble of the engine. “Or you could call me when you get the urge.”

  Seemed about right, replacing one impulse with another. Lake instead of nicotine. Only, I didn’t think that was how she meant it. I glanced over in the dark. “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going to happen? After camp?”

  “I don’t know. Guess I finish the job by your house. Then I find more work until I graduate. You go back to school.”

  “What about Tiffany?”

  The way I saw it, I had two options. Stop seeing Tiffany and end my time with the Kaplans, or keep both girls in my life. “I don’t know, Lake, but like I told you before, that’s between me and your sister.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Lake . . .”

  “You said you’d get me books about what to major in.”

  “I will.”

  “But when? I start school in a week. Next thing you know, it’ll be time to fill out applications. I’ll have homework, and my dad’s making me take a college class. I won’t have time for anything else.”

  I slid my hand down the wheel. “You freaking out a little?”

  “No, but maybe I don’t want to do all this anymore. I don’t understand why everyone else gets to decide for me.”

  I only realized then, from the panic in her voice, what she was after, pestering me about the cigarettes, Tiffany, the future. She didn’t know if we’d see each other after this. I didn’t know, either. Maybe I wouldn’t if I didn’t keep things up with Tiff. The truth was, I had little control over the situation, and Lake had even less. “I’ll get you your books,” I promised.

  “Forget the books. I don’t care about them.”

  “You should,” I said more harshly than I meant. “If you don’t know your options, how’re you going to know what to maj
or in?” Truth was, her dad wasn’t a big man, but he scared me. He had power over Lake. I had wondered more than once if she’d even ever considered a school aside from USC. This was too big a decision to let her dad make for her. “How’re you going to stand up to your dad if he tries to force you into something you don’t wanna do?”

  “What if I don’t want to go to school at all?”

  I gripped the steering wheel, frustrated, even though I knew she didn’t mean it. Neither of us had any control over this situation and she was looking for something to hold on to. “That’s not what I meant. You know it isn’t.”

  “It was just all laid out for me before I was even born.”

  “Then ask yourself what you really want, but don’t say it isn’t college. It is. The question is where you want to go and what you want to do when you get there.”

  “What do you mean ‘where’?” she asked quietly.

  “Doesn’t have to be USC, Lake. Doesn’t have to be what anyone else says.”

  She bit her thumbnail and sat quietly a while, obviously thinking. I hoped she was beginning to see she had options. She wasn’t going to figure it out tonight, but it was a start.

  We entered town suddenly, a building or two at first and then we were on the main boulevard passing fast food joints, log cabin inns, and souvenir shops.

  “I live in Long Beach,” I said, hoping it might calm her down a bit. “I’ve got a roommate and a kitchen that barely fits two people.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. “That’s far.”

  “From where? You? About a forty-minute drive.”

  “Oh.” The vinyl squawked as she adjusted her foot. “Are you happy there?”

  I couldn’t remember feeling much more than complacency since Maddy’s death. Lake was the only thing recently that hadn’t been some kind of job or obligation. “I guess. I’m not really one thing or another.”

  The first liquor store I passed was dark, so I pulled into a bar called Phil’s a few stoplights down. It took me a minute to decide where to park. There were people out front, and I didn’t want anyone to see Lake in the car. I chose a space off to the side, farthest from the building.

  “Why are we here?” Lake asked.

  “Picking up booze.” A flyer on the window advertised line dancing. Three women stood by the door, smoking, and my mouth watered for a cigarette. “I’ll only be a minute. You can’t come in, so just lock the doors and wait, all right? Don’t get out for any reason.”

  “What do you think’ll happen in a minute?”

  I guess she didn’t know yet that one minute could change your life. That if I’d left baseball practice one minute earlier, things might’ve been different for Maddy. Lake was intuitive but too trusting. She hadn’t hesitated to have me come into her parents’ house that day, even though I was three times her size and carried tools that could kill a grown man with one swing. She should have someone looking out for her. I wanted to be that someone.

  I got out of the car, slammed the door shut, and waited for the thunk of the locks. The girls were average-looking. Jeans, cowboy boots, tank tops spotted with sweat, hair stuck to their foreheads. “Hey there,” one of them said. “Looking for a dance partner?”

  I went into Phil’s and took out the twenties. “Can I buy some beer off you?” I asked the bartender.

  “How about Jack instead?”

  “That’s fine. Whatever you got for forty bucks.”

  He nodded and headed into the back.

  “Got a cigarette I can bum?” One of the girls from outside sat on a barstool next to me. I had a pack in my shirt pocket, but cigarettes cost money, and money was finite. I only spent it on what I cared about. “No.”

  She took a swig from her beer. Her ring caught my eye, a big, bulky thing with a silver band that looked oddly familiar. The bulbous, dark stone covered everything below her knuckle. I looked closer. Maybe it was glass, and hunter green, not black stone.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  She showed me her hand. “A mood ring.”

  “Fuck. Yeah, I remember now.” Maddy had one. My mom had bought it in the seventies and handed it down to her. Sometimes, when I was broody, Madison would force it on my finger and ask me to make it change colors, from dark to light. To make it happy. “What’s the green mean?”

  “I forget. I feel bored, though, so maybe that.” She looked up. “Where you from?”

  Words were like money, not worth wasting when it wouldn’t get me anywhere. “Not here.”

  If I were at home, if Lake weren’t in the truck, maybe things’d be different. Girls were a fine distraction. All but Lake. She was crystal clear to me, as was everything around her. Scenery was more beautiful. I felt blood pumping through my veins. Things sharpened that’d gone dull a while ago, even memories of Maddy. Over time, I’d forgotten some stuff about Maddy without realizing it, and around Lake, it was coming back. The way she read like Maddy, or now, this ring I probably would’ve overlooked. Any memories of Maddy usually came with a blinding kind of pain I’d learned to accept, but seeing that ring again, it didn’t make me want to drive off a cliff. It was okay.

  But did that mean I was forgetting Madison? I couldn’t even picture her as clearly anymore. Not as well as I could Lake.

  “Where then?” the woman asked. “Never seen you here before.”

  “Can I buy that off you?” I asked. “The ring?”

  She furrowed her brows, inspecting it. “It’s not worth anything.”

  I didn’t care. It wasn’t as if I was going to drive up to my mom’s and look for Maddy’s, even though it might still be there. “How about I give you the change from the alcohol?”

  She smiled. “Phil’s not going to give you any change.” She took off the ring and slid it across the bar. “Take it. I’ll get another.”

  The bartender returned fisting two paper bags. He handed me them by their necks, and I gave him the money. I put the ring in my pocket and thanked the cowgirl. Maybe I owed her a little more time than I gave her, but I had none to waste.

  I didn’t want to be away from the truck another minute. From Lake.

  20

  Manning

  Lake was exactly as I’d left her. Foot up on the seat. Eyes following me. The way she sat, the leg of her shorts gaped. I wondered if she’d taken them from Tiffany. I couldn’t see anything I shouldn’t, but it made me feel like shit that I even looked.

  I stuck the whiskey in the back and the key in the ignition. Lake turned on the radio. Janet Jackson lasted until the end of the parking lot before I switched the station to rock. “That’s the Way Love Goes” was a little too breathy for the situation I was in.

  “Can we drive a little?” Lake asked.

  “We’re gonna. It’s another twenty minutes back to camp.”

  “I mean just drive. Without going anywhere.”

  There was hardly anyone on the street, but because the lot exited by a stoplight, I had to wait for a break to get across the lane and make a U-turn.

  “Please?” she asked. “It’s my last night of freedom.”

  “Technically, you’re not free,” I said. “You’re working. And supposed to be asleep.” I scratched my chin. I needed a decent shave. I’d started the week doing the best I could with what I had—a dull razor and cold water in a communal bathroom. Eventually I’d given up shaving every morning. It made me think of Lake’s legs. I guessed the reason she hadn’t shaven that high was because she never wore anything that short.

  The fucking red light wouldn’t change and a few more cars pulled up. Time was always slow when I needed it to be fast and vice versa.

  Lake had only ever been sixteen to me. Slow.

  I couldn’t get out of this parking lot. Slow.

  This rare moment alone with her would end before it began. Fast.

  What was another few minutes when our time was up anyway? I could tell the counselors I’d had car trouble or something. I didn’t care.

  I
gave up trying to cross the lane, reversed, and found another exit to a back road. It turned into a narrow alley, but with a few maneuvers, we got to a residential street.

  Lake didn’t make any comment about getting her way. She just used the truck’s manual lever to roll down her window and shifted away from me. I turned up the music.

  Lake looked over. “This is Pink Floyd.”

  I raised my eyebrows, impressed. “Thought you didn’t know them.”

  “I do now. I bought some of their CDs from Tower Records,” she said. “I like their album covers. Dark Side of the Moon. It’s a good name.”

  Well, that was something. I’d introduced her to one of the greatest bands of all time, to “Wish You Were Here,” one of the greatest songs of all time, and that could never be bad.

  We didn’t talk for a while. I put down my window, too, to cool down. The neighborhood was dark, not a streetlamp on any corner. Every few houses or so had a light on but that was it. It was a nice place. Fancy, two-story homes. Bright white garages, custom mailboxes, and neat, green lawns. I wondered what it’d be like to live here and be home. I felt a little bad taking this growler around so late, so I slowed down and shut off the headlights. My vision acclimated quickly, and it made it even more peaceful.

  Lake had her window all the way down now. She stuck her head and part of her torso outside. Her long, blonde hair flew around her, and she had to push it out of her face. “You can see all the stars here, too,” she said. “I’m looking for the Summer Triangle.”

  I smiled to myself and checked through the windshield. I couldn’t see it, or maybe I didn’t want to take my eyes off her long enough to find it. Carefree as she looked right now, the outfit and her confidence tonight reminded me that what Tiffany said was true. Lake wasn’t a child. She’d be eighteen soon. Didn’t mean anything for me, really. I’d never be the kind of man she deserved. But it did get my heart pounding a little, thinking of her body the way I thought of her mind—something belonging to a young adult rather than a teen girl.